It’s worth recounting the central premise of Tom McCarthy’s The Visitor to emphasize that what sounds potentially cloying or cringe-worthy on the page, and would probably sound like fingernails on a chalkboard to studio executives in a pitch meeting, can become something graceful, intimate and incredibly moving in the right hands.

Six independent moviemakers talk of the state of independent moviemaking today and explain the inspirations behind their most recent films.

For most moviemakers, the only place to go after winning an Oscar, ACE and Emmy award is down—or rehab. But multi-hyphenate Paula Mazur is changing the rules. Best known as a producer, Mazur has spent the last three decades building a reputation as a moviemaker with a discerning eye for high-quality content, whether in television or film, fiction or documentary. After shifting gears to make her directorial debut in 1992, Mazur is adding a new title to her business card, this time as a screenwriter on Nim’s Island.

Sometimes an artist creates a work you love so much that he or she just become an integral part of your life, etched in your psyche and on your heart, without your ever even having come into actual contact with the person. That is an artist's job—to move and in many ways define you—and when you have a true artist, as Anthony Minghella was, they leave an imprint on your life that never fades.

The acclaimed Newmarket Shooting Script series, known for publishing books of renowned screenplays, offers several of this year’s Academy Award-nominated scripts, including Atonement, Juno, The Savages and Michael Clayton. Other 2007 Shooting Scripts include Knocked Up, Dan in Real Life and Margot at the Wedding. In addition to the screenplay itself, Newmarket Shooting Scripts include introductions, still photos and full cast and crew credits. Many books in the series also include interviews with the screenwriter.

A self-described Midwestern boy from Michigan, screenwriter David Magee is frequenting Hollywood these days. Magee, who actually started as an actor and later honed his writing skills doing novel abridgments, scored both Oscar and Golden Globe nods for his “freshman” feature-length script, Finding Neverland. Now he awaits the release of his “sophomore” effort, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, starring Amy Adams and Frances McDormand, which he calls a lovely, light comedy.

On Oscar night, it's when the telecast ends that the real fun begins. MM catches a glimpse of some of the night's biggest winners—Daniel Day-Lewis, Javier Bardem, Marion Cotillard, Diablo Cody and Joel Coen—at Oscar night's biggest event, the Governors Ball.

Juno cleaned up at Film Independent's Spirit Awards last night, taking home awards for Best Feature, Best First Screenplay for Diablo Cody and Best Female Lead for Ellen Page. Philip Seymour Hoffman won the Best Male Lead award for Tamara Jenkins' The Savages, with Jenkins herself taking the Best Screenplay Award. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly claimed two of the night's top honors, including Best Director for Julian Schnabel and Best Cinematography for Janusz Kaminski. Irishman John Carney's Once won for Best Foreign Film and Cate Blanchett matched director Todd Haynes' Robert Altman Award with her own for Best Supporting Actress for I'm Not There.

Academy members may have the final say on who will walk away with the gold at this Sunday’s Oscar ceremony. But that doesn’t mean that we here at MM can’t have a little fun getting in on the action, too. Here, five editors and longtime contributing writers weigh in on Oscar’s hits, misses and most egregious snubs!

In an industry that can often feel impersonal and intimidating, the BlueCat Screenwriting Competition is a beacon of humanism. This contest, started in 1998 by Love Liza and A Coat of Snow scribe Gordy Hoffman, places emphasis in all the right places.

Louisa May Alcott’s novel Little Women has been made for the screen no less than ten times since being published in 1868. It's inevitable that people would want to visually develop the world they had vicariously lived through. But just because it remains one of the most beloved books of all time doesn’t mean that its screen versions have fared as well. When adapting a novel, “determining what to keep and what to lose is unquestionably an angst-inducing exercise,” writes Christina Hamlett in MovieMaker’s Complete Guide to Making Movies 2008. “The bottom line?” asks Academy Award-nominated screenwriter Mark Fergus (Children of Men), “Film is about choices. It’s a brutal medium and the more hard choices that are made, the better the movie.” The nominees for this year’s Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar have undoubtedly found a happy balance.

This year’s British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) award winners are official. In addition to the results that have become commonplace this awards season (Daniel Day-Lewis and Javier Bardem winning Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor, respectively), there were a few surprises, namely Atonement’s win for Best Picture. The British romance certainly benefited from a little home field advantage, beating out consistent frontrunners No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood to reclaim some of its post-Golden Globes momentum, right in time for the Oscars.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: A moviemaker workshops a script through the Sundance Institute, the finished feature gets accepted into the prestigious festival and the critical hosannas start pouring in. Then he or she gets courted by a number of studios, several projects stall and years pass… Soon, the moviemaker is regrettably relegated to the “Where are they now?” files, along with a number of other indie film alumni who sprint out of the gate and then find it hard to get a follow-up made.

From Austin to Albuquerque and plenty of places in between, MovieMaker's eighth annual countdown of the 10 best places to live, work and make movies in the U.S.

He made spelling cool when he directed the hit documentary Spellbound in 2002 and earned an Oscar nomination for his efforts. Now Jeffrey Blitz is back and taking on the English language from a different angle with the coming-of-age comedy Rocket Science. A hit at last year's Sundance Film Festival, the story of a high school debate team had a limited theatrical release in 2007 and is being released on DVD by HBO Home Video on January 29th. MM spoke with Blitz about the difference between documentary and feature moviemaking, the difficulties in navigating today's distribution process and why adolescent awkwardness makes for fascinating filmmaking.

After becoming a child star in her native Canada, Sarah Polley captured the attention of the world with her quietly powerful performance as a paralyzed girl in Atom Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter. Now she's making her feature film debut as a writer-director and, true to form, her choice of subject matter is against the grain.

Four years after proving his comedic chops—and box office potential—with the comedy Dodgeball, writer-director Rawson Marshall Thurber is going in a completely different direction. With Michael Chabon's blessing, he's adapted the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelists first book, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, into a feature film starring Jon Foster, Sienna Miller, Peter Sarsgaard and Nick Nolte.

Micky Levy is living the American Dream. Born and raised in Israel, Levy landed on U.S. soil at the age of 17. With $700 to her name, she pulled up her bootstraps, learned how to speak English and began working her way through the often convoluted rungs of the Hollywood ladder. This past year saw the major release of her second feature film, Rails & Ties, for which she took on the roles of both writer and actress. Directed by Alison Eastwood (daughter of the legendary Clint), the movie stars Kevin Bacon as a train conductor who takes to the victim of a rail accident he had unintentionally been a part of. Along with his wife, played by Marcia Gay Harden, he discovers it’s never too late to open your heart—and your life—to someone new. Here, Levy talks to MM about her dual roles and inspirations.

After six weeks of tense negotiations, the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and the Association of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) remain deadlocked in a heated battle over digital distribution dollars. No, this isn't Perseus versus the Kraken. But it is an epic battle, the end of which will have an enormous impact for Hollywood in the years to come, as the industry moves headfirst into the electronic age.

"Don't believe the hype" and other lessons from the writer-director behind Mama's Boy and Something Borrowed.

If it’s true that people are born to do certain things, then Hank Nelken was born to be a moviemaker. Because whether he was filming Bar Mitzvahs as a kid to fund his own short films or editing wedding videos right out of USC Film School to buy bread, Nelken has always known what he wants to do with his life: Make movies.

I'm Not There, in theaters now, takes an experimental approach to the traditional biopic form by presenting its subject, Bob Dylan, as a variety of personifications.

From Oscar to Tony, Julie Taymor has found success in Hollywood and on Broadway as a writer, director, producer and costume designer. In 2003, she received an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song for Frida, which she also directed. Her latest film, Across the Universe, starring Evan Rachel Wood, is on DVD now. Here she shares her secrets for success at everything from Hollywood to Broadway.

"When possible, bake cookies in the editing room" and other lessons from one of Hollywood's most prolific writer-producer-directors.

Even as one of Hollywood's most powerful writer-producers, it has taken 15 years for Robin Swicord to get the chance to direct. But she's doing it now with The Jane Austen Book Club.

After the enormous success of recent biopics like Ray and Walk the Line, it should have been easy for writer-director Todd Haynes to make his Bob Dylan-inspired film, I'm Not There. It wasn't.

From Citizen Kane to American Beauty, the history of cinema is filled with examples of "cinematic storytelling" - films that use the full complement of moviemaking tools to tell theis stories.

Determining the roles of "writer" and "director" begins and ends with one simple question: What is the story I'm telling?

Just like the stories they write, a screenwriter's life is one based on cycles. One of Hollywood's most in-demand scribes sounds off about his own.

Whether you're looking for investors for your latest project or getting ready to finance it yourself, make sure your script has these six essential elements - which translate to audience appeal.

With so many of today's successful movies based on existing material, it pays to know how to translate a literary work into a cinematic one.

Know thyself. A Hollywood screenwriter comes clean on the freedom he found when he got his mind and his talent in alignment.

Every script has a beginning, middle and end - but sometimes it can be helpful to write them in reverse order.

The Oscar-nominated screenwriter of Children of Men says that as a writer, digging down deep is the only way you're going to bring a blank page to life.